Common flightless agricultural pests cause significant damage to plants and reduce growers' ability to provide agricultural commodities to the market. These agricultural pests may include a number of different types of arthropods, including insects and arachnids. Flightless pests, such as spider mites, aphids, thrips, and such others, feed on plants, primarily affecting leaves, buds, flowers, and stem areas. These pests may attack a plant differently. For example, aphids prevalently attack stem areas and areas between leaves and stems, while spider mites, primarily affect leaves, puncturing leaf veins and feeding on the sap.
As an example, spider mites, members of the acari subclass of the arachnida class, are a known agricultural pest for a number of crops, including, but not limited to: maize, tomatoes, cannabis, peppers, strawberries, soybeans, raspberries, etc.
Specifically, spider mites are known to have one of the most harmful economic effects in agriculture on some flowering plants or angiosperms, attacking and feeding on the plants leaves and forming colonization webs in areas between leaves and under the leaves. Additionally spider mites may be active throughout the growing season, feeding on leaves and buds and affecting plant health and overall yield.
For example, spider mites may invade leaf surfaces of vegetable plants, such as tomato plants, hemp plants, or other leafy plants. The spider mite colonization can severely affect the plants growth and health.
Further, spider mites are known to affect both upper and lower surfaces of leaves of fruit plants, such as raspberry and strawberry plants. Exhaustive feeding by spider mites produce yellow spots on upper surfaces of leaves and webbing on lower surfaces of leaves of raspberry plants. As spider mite populations expand the affected leaves may necrotize and fall off the plant.
Additionally, spider mites may also attack leaves of maize plants. Spider mites may damage maize plants by affecting the leaves and the leafy husk surrounding the maize ears. Several studies have documented huge economic loss to the maize growing agricultural sector by spider mites. Similarly, spider mites are known to attack leaves of pepper plants, affecting produce yield and causing economic loss to farmers and individual growers.
Intensive spider mite attacks reduce plant vigor and may cause leaves to be mottled, turning brown and dropping prematurely. Damage may spread from small patches on an individual plant to a group of plants to the entire plantation.
One conventional method used by many growers to combat crop loss is the spraying of pesticides, including insecticides or miticides. Spraying pesticides may cause environmental pollution and prove to be harmful to humans and other animals. Additionally, long term use of pesticides may trigger emergence of pesticide-resistant pest species, rendering the pesticide ineffective. Further, pesticides are often sprayed over a large area, and use of pesticides may lead to affecting non-target organisms, such as beneficial ladybug species and pollinators, such as bees.
The inventor herein recognized the above problems and discloses herein a pest trapping device including a suspension element and an engagement section, to trap pest arthropods, primarily crawling pest arthropods, such as spider mites, from crops and plants thereby reducing agricultural and economic damage. Although described in regards to arachnids, and specifically spider mites, the arthropod pest trapping device could be used with any number of arthropods, including insects, such as crawling insects.
In one approach, the engagement section may include a pest immobilization or pest immobilizing surface. The adhesive, non-drying and viscous nature of the pest immobilization surface may retard and adhere minute crawling pest arthropods. As described in detail below, in some embodiments, the organic nature of the contact substance may be advantageous in providing a non-toxic, environment friendly method to combat specific pest populations. Additionally, a contact lead segment may provide an arachnid pathway and allows for mobility and flexibility of using the trap. In one approach, the arachnid trap may include a fill indicator mark to indicate the level of accumulated pests. In some examples, the fill indicator mark on the pest immobilization surface may include graduated markings to help the grower quantify and estimate pest piling or population level and help track the degree of infestation in the affected plants. Such quantification may also suggest to the grower if additional pest trapping devices need to be added or replaced for enhanced protection of the affected plants. Hence, such pest trapping devices may be cost efficient; easy to assemble and deploy; easy to identify for replacement; fast and easy to remove entirely; and environmentally friendly.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any or all disadvantages noted in any part of this disclosure.